"I'm fine," I say, keeping my voice light. "Just processing. It's a big project."
"It is." I can hear the click of her typing in the background—Mina is never doing just one thing at a time. "SIREN's teamwill be reviewing everything before they move forward with any decisions. You won't need to meet them directly at this time, everything will go through email for now."
Relief washes over me, warm and immediate, and I let out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding. No meetings. No face-to-face interactions. No chance of standing in a room with five alphas whose music makes my soulmark tingle in ways I don't want to examine.
"That works for me," I reply, proud of how smooth my voice sounds despite the emotion churning beneath the surface.
"Still, you'll need to sign the NDA before the day ends. Standard procedure for high-profile projects like this." Mina's tone suggests this is non-negotiable, not that I would argue. "I'll send over the documents within the hour."
"Of course." The call ends with a click, and I set my phone down on the desk, exhaling slowly into the quiet of my studio. No meetings. No direct contact. Just me and the music, the way I've always preferred it. The way it has to be, if I'm going to survive this with my sanity—and my independence—intact.
Yet, as I stare down at the unfinished line in my notebook, I can't shake the feeling that something has already shifted. The relief I expected to feel at Mina's news is there, but it's tinged with something else—something that feels uncomfortably like disappointment.
Which is ridiculous. Why would I be disappointed about not having to meet them? That's exactly what I wanted. The spotlight holds no appeal for me, and being in a room with one of the most famous groups in the world would be the opposite of the shadows I prefer.
The pull remains, tugging at something deep in my chest, and the mark on my neck pulses with a warmth that seems almost impatient. As if it knows something I don't. As if it's waiting for something I'm not ready to face.
I think about my mother again—about the way she described the bond's patience, its persistence. How it waited for her, reached for her, refused to let her go even after she'd made her choice.
"The bond doesn't give up,"she'd said."It doesn't accept no for an answer. You can run from it, fight it, tear it out of yourself—but you can never truly escape. Some part of you will always belong to them, whether you want it to or not."
Was that why she faded so slowly after the breaking? Not just the physical trauma of severing the connection, but the psychological weight of belonging to someone she'd never see again? Of knowing that somewhere in the world, her soulmate was feeling the same emptiness, the same loss, the same half-life existence?
I never thought to ask about him, the man she was supposed to be with. The one she rejected in favor of my father. I don't even know his name, his face, whether he's still alive somewhere nursing the wound she left in his soul.
I hope, for his sake, that he found a way to move on. That he didn't spend years fading the way she did, dying by inches from a loss he never chose.
I suspect that's wishful thinking. Soulmates don't work that way. The bond is mutual, the destruction symmetrical. When my mother broke herself, she broke him too.
If I complete my bonds, if the five flowers on my mark bloom into color and I let them consume me, will I be saving us all from soul sickness, or just choosing a different kind of destruction?
I don't know. I don't have enough information yet to make that call. I know one thing for certain: I need to be careful. Every interaction with them is a risk, every moment of proximity a potential trigger. Until I understand exactly what I'm dealing with until I know whether these five men are my soulmates or just a cosmic coincidence…I have to keep my distance.
No meetings. No eye contact. No physical touch.
Simple rules for an impossible situation.
I shake off the spiraling thoughts and force my attention back to the page before me. The lyrics won't write themselves, and I've never been one to sit around analyzing feelings when there's work to be done. Work is tangible. Measurable. Work doesn't require me to confront uncomfortable truths about soulmates and destiny and the terrifying possibility that my life is about to change in ways I can't control.
Drowning in the eclipse of your voice...
I read the line again, letting the words settle into my mind, feeling out the rhythm and the emotion embedded in each syllable. It's a beginning. A doorway into the song that will eventually take shape around it. I close my eyes and let my mind drift, searching for the next line, the next image, the next piece of the puzzle. The process is familiar—a meditation of sorts, where I let go of conscious thought and allow my subconscious to take the lead. Sometimes the words come quickly, pouring out in a rush that leaves my hand cramping from trying to keep up. Other times, they trickle in slowly, each phrase hard-won after minutes or hours of waiting.
Today, they hover just out of reach, teasing me with glimpses of meaning before retreating back into the fog. I try to focus on the concept rather than the exact language. Sirens in mythology were creatures of destruction, using their beautiful voices to lure sailors to their deaths on rocky shores. But there's another interpretation—one where the siren's call isn't about destruction at all, but about surrender. About giving up the fight against something inevitable, letting yourself sink into depths that terrify and exhilarate in equal measure.
That's what the bond feels like, according to my mother. That's what love can feel like—especially the kind of love that soulmates share. It's not always gentle or comfortable. It can beoverwhelming, consuming, a force that pulls you under whether you're ready or not.
The soulmate bond doesn't care about timing or convenience. It doesn't ask permission before turning your life upside down.
Five bonds...
I think about the math, the logistics, the sheer impossibility of what the universe is apparently asking me to accept. Five soulmates means five separate connections, five threads of fate woven into my soul. It means five people who will feel what I feel, sense what I sense, suffer if I suffer. Five lives bound to mine, for better or for worse.
How would that even work? How do you divide yourself five ways without losing yourself entirely?
My mother couldn't handle one bond—or rather, she couldn't handle the absence of one bond, the emptiness left behind when she tore it out. How am I supposed to handle five?
Maybe that's why five-mate bonds are so rare. Maybe most people aren't built to withstand that kind of connection. Maybe the universe usually has enough mercy to spare people from fates they can't survive.
